What Obama would like us to believe about Benghazigate

Ralph Peters provides a helpful list of the things the White House wants the American people to believe about Benghazihate. It’s a long list:

* That intelligence professionals watching the Benghazi attack in real time and reading flash messages from the scene weren’t sure an obvious terrorist attack was a terrorist attack. A Cub Scout watching that strike go down would have recognized a planned terror operation.

* That, even now, the attack somehow, magically, might have been partly about that discredited video, after all, since the first phase was sloppier than the crisper second phase. Jeez. It’s obvious the terrorists did what any seasoned commander would do: Used the B-team as bait at the consulate, reserving the A-team to spring the trap on the CIA facility.

* That it was purely coincidental the attack occurred on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

* That doctoring the early CIA analysis to eliminate any mention of terrorism was purely a bureaucratic quirk (having coped with the interagency process, I assure you it would be easy to identify who neutered the analysis — if the White House wanted to).

* That Obama pal and UN Ambassador Susan Rice is so naïve that, after reading the classified analysis blaming a terrorist operation, she found the unclassified, castrated analysis more convincing than common sense.

* That Rice was the logical choice to dispatch to five Sunday talk shows to blame the video for the violence, even though our president himself stated in last week’s press conference that Rice had nothing to do with Benghazi. (We were also treated to another of Obama’s now-routine how-dare-you-question-me hissy fits as he defended Rice with far greater vigor than he defended our team in Benghazi.)

* That it was another bureaucratic coincidence that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wasn’t told about CIA chief David Petraeus’s new exercise routine until late on Election Day — even though Clapper was the one person in the entire government with an obvious need to know.

* That despite the general’s Friday testimony under oath on the Hill that the CIA’s analysis identified the Benghazi attack as an act of terror involving al Qaeda affiliates from the start, the available evidence somehow supported the video-did-it narrative, after all.

* That the president personally did all he could to help our personnel in Benghazi, even though the White House can offer no evidence of it.

* That there was no reason to be concerned about security in Benghazi, even though incidents and requests for better protection had stacked up for months.

* That four Americans dead as a result of a planned act of terror on another Sept. 11, just isn’t that big a deal and we need to move on.

I would add one more item to Peters’ list of highly implausible things Obama would like us to believe: That the Obama administration is conducting an honest, good-faith investigation of the events relating to Benghazigate.